From the Ground Up - Stand up For Agriculture

As we take a final look at women involved in agriculture, we visit with a young woman who grew up in a big city and had absolutely no roots or connection to a farm or ranch.

In high school she took some ag classes, showed some animals, and found she had a passion for agriculture.

This past spring as a member of the Texas A&M student group Farmers Fight she put a video on YouTube that urges people to stand up for agriculture.Jasmine Dillon is a graduate student in Animal Breeding and Genetics at Texas A&M.

“The video started really with a movement that stared here on campus the same semester called “Farmers Fight”.

“Agriculturalists, it’s time for us to stand up, because according to Yahoo Education, agriculture, animal science, and horticulture are useless degrees. But if that were true could you tell me please how is it possible for you to roll out of your silk sheets, brush your teeth with toothpaste made from cotton seeds, eat your corn pops breakfast cereal, and drink your 2% milk?”

“We wanted to address this disconnect like you talk about. We wanted to give agriculture a face. We realized that we hadn’t really told our story. And so we as students wanted to get together and begin telling that story.”

“Did you know that 29,000 kids under the age of 5 died in Somalia because they were hungry? When was the last time you were dying to eat?”

“I sat down and wrote this poem and the idea was that it would do a few things. It would get people to think about agriculture in a different way.”

“No longer is the cowboy just a man riding his horse into the sunset slinging six shooters in the wild, wild, west. He’s also the man bent over his work bench dressed in his white lab coat beaker in his hand, pouring over solutions for growing wheat in drought ridden lands. Geneticists, stand up.”

“And then it would get them to see the different professions that are touched by agriculture.”

“She’s also the quality control specialist designing critical control points to control microbial growth rates in meats and vegetables so that your food is safe to eat. Meat scientists, microbiologists, stand up.”

The video has had over 35,000 views since April of this year. I think there’s agreement among agricultural producers that Jasmine has a bright future ahead of her as an advocate for agriculture. I’m Kailey Carey looking at Brazos Valley agriculture, From The Ground Up.

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